Sherrington: Good luck in SEC, Aggies; you'll need it

1/11

AP

Photos: Candidates to join Big 12 after Texas A&M leaves --- NOTRE DAME: A long shot. But the Big 12 would be willing to let the Irish keep their NBC deal as a school network and probably guarantee the $20 million annually promised to A&M. Ever since Notre Dame was mentioned as a target by SportsDay on Aug. 18, Irish alums have rolled their eyes and adamantly denied that Notre Dame would join a conference in football. With Notre Dame losing financial ground to Big Ten rivals, maybe the Irish would listen. Certainly, the friendship between Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds and Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick could open the door enough for a sales pitch.“Our priority — and our clear priority — is maintaining our football independence and continuing to build our relationship with the Big East with our other sports,” Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick told the Austin American-Statesman. While the Big 12 may still approach the Irish, Swarbrick’s stance seems firm.

Texas A&M's pending exit from the Big 12 officially marks the end of the kind of football many of us grew up with. In good times or bad, it was unique.

Not every glance backward is a sign of weakness or
senility. Even with the advent of the Internet and smart phones and GPS and
street tacos, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that something was
once better than it is now. And not just my blood pressure, either.

Texas A&M’s pending exit from the Big 12 officially marks the end of the
kind of football many of us grew up with. In good times or bad, it was unique.
If you were born in Texas, you were raised to think such a description a
virtue.

Other conferences might have better years or stronger teams or more exotic
locations, but no league packed as many members from one state as the old
Southwest Conference. If you were so inclined, you could make a lap of all eight
Texas members in a single day. I could map you the route in Dairy Queens.

The proximity of the schools provided most of the appeal and every bit of the
aggravation. The enemy came at you from all sides, all day, every day of the
week.

They were your neighbors, your partners, your clients, your in-laws. The guy
ahead of you at the checkout. The family in the pew behind you.

The person passing the potatoes at dinner. There was simply no let-up.

And it wasn’t just a lot of talk. Big or small, proud or humbled, every
school had its day. For three hours, or at least until halftime, everyone got a
shot at glory.

Nobody poked you in the ribs and asked the name of the coach or the
quarterback or the linebacker. SWC fans knew the opposing lineups. They knew
their records. They knew their tendencies. They knew their histories. They
couldn’t help themselves. They were all mixed up in it.

The league’s autonomy might even have indirectly inspired the misguided souls
who thought Texas should secede.

If a state could support the SWC and its barroom style for 80 years, what’s a
little matter of Lone Star sovereignty?

“I loved the old SWC,” said Gene Stallings, who grew up in Texas, played at
A&M under Bear Bryant and coached his alma mater as well as Bryant’s.

“I didn’t think it could get any better than that.”

Here’s the thing: It didn’t get better. Times just changed.

Texas got tired of carving up the revenues with schools that didn’t bring
their fair share to the table. When Arkansas left for the SEC, it was rumored
that Texas would go to the Pacific-10 and A&M to the SEC. Bigger pictures
began to emerge. Money became a wedge.

When the SWC finally broke up in 1995, SMU, TCU, Houston and Rice weren’t the
only ones to mourn its passing. But at least an abbreviated form carried on in
the Big 12 South.

At least there was still A&M and Texas, the third-oldest rivalry in
college football.

But now that’s in doubt. The Aggies would like to keep the Texas game. Texas
won’t. The Longhorns don’t need a nonconference game with an emotionally-charged
opponent. They also may feel disinclined to play the team jeopardizing a league
that has afforded Texas everything it wants.

Texas has always called the shots, only it used to be more subtle. Now
there’s no reluctance in its reach.

Of course, it’s not so different across the nation. Everywhere you look, the
big boys are pricing the little ones out of the market.

Stallings, who, until March, was on A&M’s board of regents, says he
agrees with the notion that the Aggies are merely protecting their future. He’s
certain the SEC will be among four super-conferences once college football gains
a playoff.

“I don’t think the Big 12 will be one of those conferences,” he said.

Texas will do just fine. Oklahoma, too. But most of the rest will be forced
to scramble. Some will learn what life’s been like for SMU, Rice and
Houston.

A&M will enjoy the opportunity to play in a conference where it’s the school from Texas, not just one of them. But it will
also find life in the SEC far more difficult. The stadiums are bigger, the
players better, the fans louder, the rules slicker.

“If you do not enjoy taking your team into Baton Rouge and Gainesville and
Tuscaloosa,” Stallings cautioned, “you have no business in that conference.”

Without question, it will be a new day for A&M. College football in
Texas, too. It’ll seem more like Florida. Or California. Not the Texas I grew up
in.

Change such as this was probably inevitable given the way money drives
college athletics further and further from its mission and roots. Get aboard or
get run over. History tells us only a fool holds blindly to the past. But it
doesn’t mean it wasn’t better.

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About Kevin Sherrington

Kevin Sherrington, a general sports columnist, was born in Dallas and grew up in Houston. He has worked at five newspapers in Texas. He has worked at The Dallas Morning News since 1985. He had no idea his career would come to blogging.